When the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apa submarine volcano erupted in 2022, it spewed roughly 2.9 billion tons of ash and gas into the air above the South Pacific. According to a new study, the eruption also cleaned up some of its own mess.

The researchers estimate that the eruption released about 330 gigagrams of methane , which is roughly equivalent to the annual emissions produced by more than 2 million cows. But their findings, published in Nature Communications on Thursday, show that chemical reactions within the eruption plume destroyed about 900 megagrams of methane per day—roughly equivalent to the daily emissions from 2 million cows.…